Effect of Government Expenditure on Ict and Unemployment in Nigeria from 1990 to 2022

Government has continued to invest in the information, communication and technology in order to reduce unemployment in the country. Hence this study empirically examines the effect of government expenditure on ICT and unemployment in Nigeria using the following variables: Unemployment rate, Government expenditure on ICT, Real gross domestic product, Exchange rate and Gross fixed capital formation for the period 1990 to 2022 and employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model for analysis. The study used annual time series data on the variables, sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria and World Bank Statistical bulletins and tested the stationarity of the data using Augmented Dickey Fuller test (ADF) and Phillips-perron (PP) unit root test while using the ARDL bounds co-integration test to check for long run relationship among the variables. The empirical results shows that both short-run and long run relationship exist between the dependent variable (UNEMP), independent variable (GEXICT) and the control variables (RGDP, EXCHR & GFCF). It indicated that government expenditure in the ICT sector significantly impacts the unemployment rate negatively in Nigeria. The result also indicated that Real gross domestic product and Exchange rate affects the Unemployment rate in Nigeria in the short run and long run as well. The last control variable, Gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) is the only variable that has a significant positive effect on unemployment in Nigeria in the short and long run. The study therefore concluded that unemployment in Nigeria is significantly affected by the government expenditure in the ICT sector negatively and recommended that government/ expenditure in the ICT sector and encourage new digital organizations through tax relief of tax cut, create a conducive competitive environment for the growth of digital companies , reduce the level of unemployment through continuous investment in the economy and take a proactive approach to investment in the digital sector to drive economic growth in the country.